*HARD SELL* In a Democracy, the President Is Also Salesman in Chief *By ELISABETH BUMILLER* WASHINGTON  The American president has always played multiple roles in the drama of the United States: commander in chief, steward of the economy, symbol*HARD 
SELL*
    In a Democracy, the President Is Also Salesman in Chief
*By ELISABETH BUMILLER*
WASHINGTON  The American president has always played multiple roles in
the drama of the United States: commander in chief, steward of the
economy, symbol of the nation, head of the party. But presidents have to
be salesmen, too.
Salesmanship and democracy are intricately linked in that most
presidents have had to learn how to sell difficult policies to the
public in trying times. President Bush is now faced with the challenge
of selling the public on his policies in Iraq, but Woodrow Wilson had to
sell World War I and Franklin D. Roosevelt spent six years talking
Americans into World War II. "Roosevelt was in a sense a master salesman
of what the public thought at the time were some largely unpalatable
items," said David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford. "If
anything, he faced even deeper, widespread opposition than Bush."
But the history of presidential salesmanship has taught three critical
lessons: the importance of building a broad consensus, of assuming
intelligence on the part of your audience and of leveling with the
people who voted you into the White House.
"I don't care if the public is buying an automobile, a drug that cures
allergies or a foreign policy," said Donny Deutsch, an advertising
executive in New York. "It's basically `Give them the facts.' " On Iraq,
Mr. Deutsch said, "forget whether this was the right or wrong move, and
in their hearts, most Americans were behind it. Good selling starts with
complete candor."
Given these parameters, interviews last week with historians,
advertising executives, pollsters and Democratic and Republican
image-makers turned up this consensus: Mr. Bush has to do a better job 
or at least a more extensive job  of selling Americans on Iraq and the
American occupation, no matter what anyone might think of the policy
itself.
Many of those interviewed, including some Republicans, said Mr. Bush's
speech two weeks ago, when he said he would ask Congress for $87 billion
to pay for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and
Afghanistan, has turned out to be one of the biggest political eggs laid
this year.
From an advertising point of view, Mr. Bush was perhaps too successful,
or inadvertently sold the wrong product. The most famous number in
America right now, pollsters said, was that stunning $87 billion, a
symbol of how entangled the United States is in Baghdad nearly five
months after Mr. Bush declared major combat at an end.
Certainly various polls conducted after Mr. Bush's speech, a prime-time
address on Sept. 7, show that his words did not reassure the public. In
late August, a Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Americans approved
of the job Mr. Bush was doing. But that number dropped to 52 percent in
a Gallup poll conducted from Sept. 8 to 10, right after Mr. Bush's speech.
The week after that speech, the White House sent out its best-known
salesmen to blanket the Sunday morning talk programs and defend the
administration on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC's
"Meet the Press," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was on CBS's
"Face the Nation," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was on Fox News
Sunday, and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of
staff, appeared on ABC's "This Week."
The campaign continued with Condoleezza Rice, the national security
adviser, appearing on Fox News on Monday and NBC's `Today" on Tuesday.
But Mr. Bush's slide didn't stop. In the most recent Gallup poll,
conducted from Sept. 19 to 21, Mr. Bush's overall approval rating had
fallen to the lowest of his presidency, with 50 percent saying they
approved of his job performance.
The White House could take some encouragement that his support was
stronger in the Midwest and South, Republican "red states" territory. In
the Midwest, 53 percent approved of Mr. Bush's job performance; in the
Northeast, 46 percent did.
Mr. Bush's next big job of salesmanship was last week at the United
Nations, where his address to the General Assembly was both a forceful
defense of the war and an unapologetic appeal to skeptical allies for
help in securing and rebuilding the "young democracy" of Iraq. But the
response was cool, and many world leaders said Mr. Bush was simply
playing the role of tough-minded president for an audience at home.
The speech would have been better received, some historians argued, if
the president had built a broader consensus at home and abroad. Though
Pearl Harbor ultimately plunged the nation into war, Roosevelt had also
waged a long campaign to sell Americans on the dangers of fascism.
"By some reckonings, he started as early as 1935 trying to educate this
country about just how dangerous the international environment was
becoming," Mr. Kennedy of Stanford said.
So what should Mr. Bush do now?
Democrats say that the problem is the war and the occupation itself, and
that the slickest message from the White House can't change the
substance underneath. In other words, some things can't be sold.
"Unfortunately, at this point, it's a policy question, not a
communications challenge," said Stanley B. Greenberg, who was Bill
Clinton's pollster. "They've got to internationalize it."
Republicans say that Mr. Bush has to give more speeches with a good-news
theme, and talk up the new schools, hospitals and power plants in Iraq.
"Part of the problem is, the president has got more than one thing on
his plate," said Charles Black, a longtime Republican strategist who is
close to the White House. "He can't go speak about Iraq every day, but
every chance that he gets they ought to err on the side of him doing a
lot of news on Iraq until people understand a little bit better what
we're trying to do."
Advertising executives say that Mr. Bush has to say in public what his
advisers are saying in private, which is that they were unprepared for
the problems of the occupation. "It's basic Selling 101," Mr. Deutsch
said. "If a car in the past has had a problem flipping over, you have to
hit it head on. The American public gives people second and third chances."
G. Clotaire Rapaille, a French-born medical anthropologist who has done
psychological consumer research for Seagram, Procter & Gamble and Ford,
agreed  up to a point. The most important thing, he said, is for the
president to move on. "Everything that happened yesterday is
irrelevant," Mr. Rapaille said.
On the other hand, he said, citing statistics about new schools in
Baghdad is not the answer. "This is kind of boring," Mr. Rapaille said.
The important thing is to tell a story. "I would have an Iraqi child,
and I would make a hero of this child," Mr. Rapaille said. "And then we
have him on television telling, `Today I went to school, I talked to my
grandmother, and this is what my future is going to be now. I want to
study, I want to become an engineer.' "
Then, Mr. Rapaille said, "we can have e-mails sent to this child, we
create connections. So that's for one day."
The next day, Mr. Rapaille said, the president's advisers should find a
young Iraqi woman who wants to be married and have children, and they
should put her on television with the message, "now there is peace, she
can do just that." The next week, Mr. Rapaille said, "we have a guy who
wants to start a shop to repair cars."
Or as Mr. Rapaille concluded, in the words of a true salesman, "Right
now it's not that the president is not good, it's that the story is bad."
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